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Parsimony (5 of 5) Comparison of two hypotheses

Image caption:The parsimony principle tells us to choose the simplest scientific explanation that fits the evidence. Hypothesis 1 requires six evolutionary changes and Hypothesis 2 requires seven evolutionary changes, with a bony skeleton evolving independently, twice. Although both fit the available data, the parsimony principle says that Hypothesis 1 is better — since it does not hypothesize unnecessarily complicated changes.

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Parsimony (1 of 5) Vertebrate character matrixCharacter data for some major vertebrate lineages. Characters were limited to characters that are likely homologous (note that many vertebrate lineages and many characters were excluded from this example for the sake of simplicity).